Each year, as part of our overall effort creating the TechRepublic Geek Gift Guide, we ask our resident researcher Liz Lightfoot to conduct a formal, scientific survey regarding the gift-giving intent of our community and members. The results of the survey are always enlightening and often surprising, but the 2009 results offer up some unexpected revelations.

The wish list mirrors what many of the givers said they were most likely to buy this year, which should mean lots of happy people all around this year. The wish list does include the notebook/netbook category - you can never go wrong with another computing device I guess.

Question 3: Where do you usually shop for your geek gifts?

These results surprised me slightly - considering only the top seven retailer choices in the survey, Amazon is the clear winner. Despite efforts by bricks and mortar retailers like Best Buy and Walmart, geeks prefer to do their buying online with eBay and Newegg making the top seven choices. (For a complete list of retailers and how they ranked overall, see the last image.)

Question 4: How much do you plan on spending this holiday season?

The majority of respondents are planning to spend between $250 and $1000 this year for holiday gifts. In 2008, survey respondents said they were going to spend slightly more with the majority skewed toward the $500 to $1000 range.

Supplemental data

I thought these graphs might be of interest.

About Mark Kaelin

Mark W. Kaelin has been writing and editing stories about the IT industry, gadgets, finance, accounting, and tech-life for more than 25 years. Most recently, he has been a regular contributor to BreakingModern.com, aNewDomain.net, and TechRepublic.

Full Bio

Mark W. Kaelin has been writing and editing stories about the IT industry, gadgets, finance, accounting, and tech-life for more than 25 years. Most recently, he has been a regular contributor to BreakingModern.com, aNewDomain.net, and TechRepublic.